From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

I like the little duckies, he,he, all having a big trip around the world.

But @hippie is it ever going to end.

That is huge Hippie. FDA has been bought off again. Farmers do not want round up ready alfalfa, yet they approved it anyway!!!

I went to Saudi back in the 70s and was struck with the utter artificiality of the culture. It was like a nation of drug dealers, some of whom happened to be not only completely corrupt by intensely religious. The palaces along one road were like a series of hotels. Men in burnooses with gold chains, fast cars, and blonde women. The high ranking men, who were my hosts, lived in an opulence that was like a Hunter Thompson Las Vegas hallucination on steroids. They were oddly feminine. I never got past the public rooms, and one never saw the Arab women, except as black bags passing like wraths in the malls. Gold was everywhere. And beneath it was a monstrous system of what amounted to indentured labor. It is the strangest and most disturbing country I have ever been in, and it could only exist because of our addiction to oil.




WikiLeaks: Saudi Royal Welfare Program Revealed

LONDON (Reuters) - When Saudi King Abdullah arrived home last week, he came bearing gifts: handouts worth $37 billion, apparently intended to placate Saudis of modest means and insulate the world's biggest oil exporter from the wave of protest sweeping the Arab world.

But some of the biggest handouts over the past two decades have gone to his own extended family, according to unpublished American diplomatic cables dating back to 1996.
The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Reuters, provide remarkable insight into how much the vast royal welfare program has cost the country -- not just financially but in terms of undermining social cohesion.

Besides the huge monthly stipends that every Saudi royal receives, the cables detail various money-making schemes some royals have used to finance their lavish lifestyles over the years. Among them: siphoning off money from "off-budget" programs controlled by senior princes, sponsoring expatriate workers who then pay a small monthly fee to their royal patron and, simply, "borrowing from the banks, and not paying them back."

As long ago as 1996, U.S. officials noted that such unrestrained behavior could fuel a backlash against the Saudi elite. In the assessment of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh in a cable from that year, "of the priority issues the country faces, getting a grip on royal family excesses is at the top."

A 2007 cable showed that King Abdullah has made changes since taking the throne six years ago, but recent turmoil in the Middle East underlines the deep-seated resentment about economic disparities and corruption in the region.

A Saudi government spokesman contacted by Reuters declined to comment.

MONTHLY CHEQUES

The November 1996 cable -- entitled "Saudi Royal Wealth: Where do they get all that money?" -- provides an extraordinarily detailed picture of how the royal patronage system works. It's the sort of overview that would have been useful required reading for years in the U.S. State department.

It begins with a line that could come from a fairytale: "Saudi princes and princesses, of whom there are thousands, are known for the stories of their fabulous wealth -- and tendency to squander it."

The most common mechanism for distributing Saudi Arabia's wealth to the royal family is the formal, budgeted system of monthly stipends that members of the Al Saud family receive, according to the cable. Managed by the Ministry of Finance's "Office of Decisions and Rules," which acts like a kind of welfare office for Saudi royalty, the royal stipends in the mid-1990s ran from about $800 a month for "the lowliest member of the most remote branch of the family" to $200,000-$270,000 a month for one of the surviving sons of Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia.

Grandchildren received around $27,000 a month, "according to one contact familiar with the stipends" system, the cable says. Great-grandchildren received about $13,000 and great-great- grandchildren $8,000 a month.

"Bonus payments are available for marriage and palace building," according to the cable, which estimates that the system cost the country, which had an annual budget of $40 billion at the time, some $2 billion a year.

"The stipends also provide a substantial incentive for royals to procreate since the stipends begin at birth."

After a visit to the Office of Decisions and Rules, which was in an old building in Riyadh's banking district, the U.S. embassy's economics officer described a place "bustling with servants picking up cash for their masters." The office distributed the monthly stipends -- not just to royals but to "other families and individuals granted monthly stipends in perpetuity." It also fulfilled "financial promises made by senior princes."

The head of the office at the time, Abdul-Aziz al-Shubayli, told the economics officer that an important part of his job "at least in today's more fiscally disciplined environment, is to play the role of bad cop." He "rudely grilled a nearly blind old man about why an eye operation promised by a prince and confirmed by royal Diwan note had to be conducted overseas and not for free in one of the first-class eye hospitals in the kingdom." After finally signing off on a trip, Shubayli noted that he himself had been in the United States twice for medical treatment, once for a chronic ulcer and once for carpal tunnel syndrome. "He chuckled, suggesting that both were probably job-induced."

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

But the stipend system was clearly not enough for many royals, who used a range of other ways to make money, "not counting business activities."

"By far the largest is likely royal skimming from the approximately $10 billion in annual off-budget spending controlled by a few key princes," the 1996 cable states. Two of those projects -- the Two Holy Mosques Project and the Ministry of Defense's Strategic Storage Project -- are "highly secretive, subject to no Ministry of Finance oversight or controls, transacted through the National Commercial Bank, and widely believed to be a source of substantial revenues" for the then-King and a few of his full brothers, according to the authors of the cable.

In a meeting with the U.S. ambassador at the time, one Saudi prince, alluding to the off-budget programs, "lamented the travesty that revenues from 'one million barrels of oil per day' go entirely to 'five or six princes,'" according to the cable, which quoted the prince.
Then there was the apparently common practice for royals to borrow money from commercial banks and simply not repay their loans. As a result, the 12 commercial banks in the country were "generally leary of lending to royals."

The managing director of another bank in the kingdom told the ambassador that he divided royals into four tiers, according to the cable. The top tier was the most senior princes who, perhaps because they were so wealthy, never asked for loans. The second tier included senior princes who regularly asked for loans. "The bank insists that such loans be 100 percent collateralized by deposits in other accounts at the bank," the cable reports. The third tier included thousands of princes the bank refused to lend to. The fourth tier, "not really royals, are what this banker calls the 'hangers on'."

Another popular money-making scheme saw some "greedy princes" expropriate land from commoners. "Generally, the intent is to resell quickly at huge markup to the government for an upcoming project." By the mid-1990s, a government program to grant land to commoners had dwindled. "Against this backdrop, royal land scams increasingly have become a point of public contention."

The cable cites a banker who claimed to have a copy of "written instructions" from one powerful royal that ordered local authorities in the Mecca area to transfer to his name a "Waqf" -- religious endowment -- of a small parcel of land that had been in the hands of one family for centuries. "The banker noted that it was the brazenness of the letter ... that was particularly egregious."

Another senior royal was famous for "throwing fences up around vast stretches of government land."

The confiscation of land extends to businesses as well, the cable notes. A prominent and wealthy Saudi businessman told the embassy that one reason rich Saudis keep so much money outside the country was to lessen the risk of 'royal expropriation.'"

Finally, royals kept the money flowing by sponsoring the residence permits of foreign workers and then requiring them to pay a monthly "fee" of between $30 and $150. "It is common for a prince to sponsor a hundred or more foreigners," the 1996 cable says.

BIG SPENDERS

The U.S. diplomats behind the cable note wryly that despite all the money that has been given to Saudi royals over the years there is not "a significant number of super-rich princes ... In the end," the cable states, Saudi's "royals still seem more adept at squandering than accumulating wealth."

But the authors of the cable also warned that all that money and excess was undermining the legitimacy of the ruling family. By 1996, there was "broad sentiment that royal greed has gone beyond the bounds of reason". Still, as long as the "royal family views this country as 'Al Saud Inc.' ever increasing numbers of princes and princesses will see it as their birthright to receive lavish dividend payments, and dip into the till from time to time, by sheer virtue of company ownership."

In the years that followed that remarkable assessment of Saudi royalty, there were some official efforts toward reform -- driven in the late 1990s and early 2000s in particular by an oil price between $10-20 a barrel. But the real push for reform began in 2005, when King Abdullah succeeded to the throne, and even then change came slowly.

By February 2007, according to a second cable entitled "Crown Prince Sultan backs the King in family disputes", the reforms were beginning to bite. "By far the most widespread source of discontent in the ruling family is the King's curtailment of their privileges," the cable says. "King Abdullah has reportedly told his brothers that he is over 80 years old and does not wish to approach his judgment day with the 'burden of corruption on my shoulder.'"

The King, the cable states, had disconnected the cellphone service for "thousands of princes and princesses." Year-round government-paid hotel suites in Jeddah had been canceled, as was the right of royals to request unlimited free tickets from the state airline. "We have a first-hand account that a wife of Interior minister Prince Naif attempted to board a Saudia flight with 12 companions, all expecting to travel for free," the authors of the cables write, only to be told "to her outrage" that the new rules meant she could only take two free guests.

Others were also angered by the rules. Prince Mishal bin Majid bin Abdulaziz had taken to driving between Jeddah and Riyadh "to show his annoyance" at the reforms, according to the cable.

Abdullah had also reigned in the practice of issuing "block visas" to foreign workers "and thus cut the income of many junior princes" as well as dramatically reducing "the practice of transferring public lands to favored individuals."

The U.S. cable reports that all those reforms had fueled tensions within the ruling family to the point where Interior Minister Prince Naif and Riyadh Governor Prince Salman had "sought to openly confront the King over reducing royal entitlements."

But according to "well established sources with first hand access to this information," Crown Prince Sultan stood by Abdullah and told his brothers "that challenging the King was a 'red line' that he would not cross." Sultan, the cable says, has also followed the King's lead and turned down requests for land transfers.

The cable comments that Sultan, longtime defense minister and now also Crown Prince, seemed to value family unity and stability above all.

(Editing by Jim Impoco, Claudia Parsons and Sara Ledwith)

Copyright 2010 Thomson Reuters.

Source;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/28/wikileaks-saudi-royal-wel_n_829097.html

This is worthy in noting...and quite OK with me

***********

Scientists say higher vitamin D intake will slash cancer, MS, and diabetes risk by half

Wednesday, March 02, 2011 by: S. L. Baker, features writer


(NaturalNews) In findings just published in the journal Anticancer Research, scientists at the University of California (UC) San Diego School of Medicine and Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha have reported that most people need a much higher intake of vitamin D. And that simple step added to your life could slash your risk of developing serious diseases -- including cancer -- by about 50 percent.

The new study involved a survey of several thousand volunteers who took supplements containing 1000 to 10,000 IU per day. The researchers ran blood tests to measure the level of 25-vitamin D, which is the form of almost all vitamin D circulating in the bloodstream.

"We found that daily intakes of vitamin D by adults in the range of 4000 to 8000 IU are needed to maintain blood levels of vitamin D metabolites in the range needed to reduce by about half the risk of several diseases -- breast cancer, colon cancer, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes," Dr. Cedric Garland, professor of family and preventive medicine at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, said in a statement to media.

He added that the amount of vitamin D needed for disease prevention is far higher than the minimal dosage of 400 IU per day that was originally prescribed in the 20th century to treat and prevent rickets. However, upping vitamin D intake into the 4000 IU daily range and higher appears to be safe, according to a December 2010 report from the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine.

"Most scientists who are actively working with vitamin D now believe that 40 to 60 ng/ml is the appropriate target concentration of 25-vitamin D in the blood for preventing the major vitamin D-deficiency related diseases, and have joined in a letter on this topic," Dr. Garland stated. "Unfortunately, according to a recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, only 10 percent of the US population has levels in this range, mainly people who work outdoors."

Robert P. Heaney, MD, of Creighton University, a distinguished biomedical scientist, said he was not surprised by the new study's results based on his decades of research into the health benefits of vitamin D. "Now is the time for virtually everyone to take more vitamin D to help prevent some major types of cancer, several other serious illnesses, and fractures," Dr. Heaney said a statement to the press.

Source;
http://www.naturalnews.com/031560_vitamin_D_cancer.html

Here is a responsible assessment of what our insanity is costing us. This should stun you. With everything calculated we spend on security twice what all the rest of the world spends combined. Yet, I can tell you, and anyone who has travelled abroad knows I am right and will confirm this, America is the most fearful nation on the planet -- absent countries with active wars like Libya. It is so notable coming to the United States that it is like a change in the air. This is all being done so that a small group of corporations can prosper. It is only rational when seen through the prism of profit.

Christopher Hellman is communications liaison at the National Priorities Project in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was previously a military policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Defense Information, and spent 10 years on Capitol Hill as a congressional staffer working on national security and foreign policy issues.


$1.2 Trillion: The Real U.S. National Security Budget No One Wants You to Know About



By Chris Hellman, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on March 1, 2011, Printed on March 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/150086/

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

What if you went to a restaurant and found it rather pricey? Still, you ordered your meal and, when done, picked up the check only to discover that it was almost twice the menu price.

Welcome to the world of the real U.S. national security budget. Normally, in media accounts, you hear about the Pentagon budget and the war-fighting supplementary funds passed by Congress for our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That already gets you into a startling price range -- close to $700 billion for 2012 -- but that’s barely more than half of it. If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year.

Take that in for a moment. It’s true; you won’t find that figure in your daily newspaper or on your nightly newscast, but it’s no misprint. It may even be an underestimate. In any case, it’s the real thing when it comes to your tax dollars. The simplest way to grasp just how Americans could pay such a staggering amount annually for “security” is to go through what we know about the U.S. national security budget, step by step, and add it all up.

So, here we go. Buckle your seat belt: it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Fortunately for us, on February 14th the Obama administration officially released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget request. Of course, it hasn’t been passed by Congress -- even the 2011 budget hasn’t made it through that august body yet -- but at least we have the most recent figures available for our calculations.

For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security. Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg.

To get closer to a real figure, it’s necessary to start peeking at other parts of the federal budget where so many other pots of security spending are squirreled away.

Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities like making sure our current stockpile of warheads will work as expected and cleaning up the waste created by seven decades of developing and producing them. That money, however, officially falls in the province of the Department of Energy. And then, don’t forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a “miscellaneous” category -- a kind of department of chump change -- that is included in neither its base budget nor those war-fighting funds.

So, even though we’re barely started, we’ve already hit a total official FY 2012 Pentagon budget request of:

$703.1 billion dollars.

Not usually included in national security spending are hundreds of billions of dollars that American taxpayers are asked to spend to pay for past wars, and to support our current and future national security strategy.

For starters, that $117.8 billion war-funding request for the Department of Defense doesn’t include certain actual “war-related fighting” costs. Take, for instance, the counterterrorism activities of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. For the first time, just as with the Pentagon budget, the FY 2012 request divides what’s called "International Affairs" in two: that is, into an annual "base" budget as well as funding for "Overseas Contingency Operations" related to Iraq and Afghanistan. (In the Bush years, these used to be called the Global War on Terror.) The State Department’s contribution? $8.7 billion. That brings the grand but very partial total so far to:

$711.8 billion.

The White House has also requested $71.6 billion for a post-2001 category called “homeland security” -- of which $18.1 billion is funded through the Department of Defense. The remaining $53.5 billion goes through various other federal accounts, including the Department of Homeland Security ($37 billion), the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion), and the Department of Justice ($4.6 billion). All of it is, however, national security funding which brings our total to:

$765.3 billion.

The U.S. intelligence budget was technically classified prior to 2007, although at roughly $40 billion annually, it was considered one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. Since then, as a result of recommendations by the 9/11 Commission, Congress has required that the government reveal the total amount spent on intelligence work related to the National Intelligence Program (NIP).

This work done by federal agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency consists of keeping an eye on and trying to understand what other nations are doing and thinking, as well as a broad range of “covert operations” such as those being conducted in Pakistan. In this area, we won’t have figures until FY 2012 ends. The latest NIP funding figure we do have is $53.1 billion for FY 2010. There’s little question that the FY 2012 figure will be higher, but let’s be safe and stick with what we know. (Keep in mind that the government spends plenty more on “intelligence.” Additional funds for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP), however, are already included in the Pentagon’s 2012 base budget and war-fighting supplemental, though we don’t know what they are. The FY 2010 funding for MIP, again the latest figure available, was $27 billion.) In any case, add that $53.1 billion and we’re at:

$818.4 billion.

Veterans programs are an important part of the national security budget with the projected funding figure for 2012 being $129.3 billion. Of this, $59 billion is for veterans’ hospital and medical care, $70.3 billion for disability pensions and education programs. This category of national security funding has been growing rapidly in recent years because of the soaring medical-care needs of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars. According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, by 2020 total funding for health-care services for veterans will have risen another 45%-75%. In the meantime, for 2012 we’ve reached:

$947.7 billion.

If you include the part of the foreign affairs budget not directly related to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other counterterrorism operations, you have an additional $18 billion in direct security spending. Of this, $6.6 billion is for military aid to foreign countries, while almost $2 billion goes for “international peacekeeping” operations. A further $709 million has been designated for countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism, and clearing landmines planted in regional conflicts around the globe. This leaves us at:

$965.7 billion.

As with all federal retirees, U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees receive pension benefits from the government. The 2012 figure is $48.5 billion for military personnel, $20 billion for those civilian employees, which means we’ve now hit:

$1,034.2 billion. (Yes, that’s $1.03 trillion!)

When the federal government lacks sufficient funds to pay all of its obligations, it borrows. Each year, it must pay the interest on this debt which, for FY 2012, is projected at $474.1 billion. The National Priorities Project calculates that 39% of that, or $185 billion, comes from borrowing related to past Pentagon spending.

Add it all together and the grand total for the known national security budget of the United States is:

$1,219.2 billion. (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)

A country with a gross domestic product of $1.2 trillion would have the 15th largest economy in the world, ranking between Canada and Indonesia, and ahead of Australia, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia. Still, don’t for a second think that $1.2 trillion is the actual grand total for what the U.S. government spends on national security. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once famously spoke of the world’s “known unknowns.” Explaining the phrase this way: “That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.” It’s a concept that couldn’t apply better to the budget he once oversaw. When it comes to U.S. national security spending, there are some relevant numbers we know are out there, even if we simply can’t calculate them.

To take one example, how much of NASA’s proposed $18.7 billion budget falls under national security spending? We know that the agency works closely with the Pentagon. NASA satellite launches often occur from the Air Force’s facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Air Force has its own satellite launch capability, but how much of that comes as a result of NASA technology and support? In dollars terms, we just don’t know.

Other “known unknowns” would include portions of the State Department budget. One assumes that at least some of its diplomatic initiatives promote our security interests. Similarly, we have no figure for the pensions of non-Pentagon federal retirees who worked on security issues for the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, or the Departments of Justice and Treasury. Nor do we have figures for the interest on moneys borrowed to fund veterans’ benefits, among other national security-related matters. The bill for such known unknowns could easily run into the tens of billions of dollars annually, putting the full national security budget over the $1.3 trillion mark or even higher.

There’s a simple principle here. American taxpayers should know just what they are paying for. In a restaurant, a customer would be outraged to receive a check almost twice as high as the menu promised. We have no idea whether the same would be true in the world of national security spending, because Americans are never told what national security actually means at the cash register.

Source;
http://www.alternet.org/world/150086/%241.2_trillion%3A_the_real_u.s._national_security_budget_no_one_wants_you_to_know_about/

Are you one of these people? Do you think it is worth asking why one-third of Americans don't sleep the needed seven hours a night?

Just consider this:
"About 46 percent of those currently unable to find work said they got fewer than seven hours of sleep, compared with 37 percent of employed people."


So tired. More than a third of adults don't sleep 7 hours
Two government reports reveal the sleep habits of adults in the U.S.



short news video report here;
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41890033/ns/health-health_care/

By MyHealthNewsDaily Staff
MyHealthNewsDaily
updated 3/3/2011

Two reports released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday reveal the sleep habits of adults in the United States, including their increasing tendency to get fewer than seven hours a night, hurting their ability to concentrate and raising the risk of driving.

Residents of Hawaii have particular trouble sleeping well, according to the responses to one survey, and the CDC said more research on the matter is needed.

In one report, based on a survey of nearly 75,000 people in 2009, CDC researchers examined four unhealthy sleep behaviors: inadequate sleep, snoring, nodding off during the day and nodding off while driving.

Thirty-five percent reported getting fewer than seven hours of sleep on an average night, 48 percent reported snoring, 38 percent reported unintentionally falling asleep during the day sometime in the previous month, and nearly 5 percent said they'd nodded off while driving in the previous month.

The number of U.S. adults reporting that they get fewer than seven hours of sleep rose from 1985 to 2004, and that increase could be attributed to trends such as the increased use of technology and more people working night shifts, the CDC said.

Among people ages 25 to 54, nearly 40 percent reported getting fewer than seven hours of sleep. People over 65 were the least likely to say they got fewer than seven hours of sleep — about 25 percent of them reported this.

About 46 percent of those currently unable to find work said they got fewer than seven hours of sleep, compared with 37 percent of employed people. And, of the 12 states in which adults were surveyed, Minnesota had the lowest rate (27 percent) of residents who got fewer than seven hours of sleep, while 45 percent of Hawaiians said the same.

In fact, Hawaiians had the highest prevalence of all of the unhealthy sleep behaviors.

The National Sleep Foundation suggests seven to nine hours of sleep per night for adults. Both shorter and longer durations can be worse for your health, the CDC said.

More than 56 percent of men reported snoring, while 40 percent of women did.

People ages 18 to 24 and those over 65 were the most likely to unintentionally fall asleep during the day — about 44 percent of these groups reported nodding off.

And people ages 25 to 34 were the most likely to say they'd fallen asleep while driving sometime during the last month. Seven percent of them did, compared with just 2 percent of seniors, who were least likely to report this behavior. Nearly 6 percent of men said they'd done this, while 3½ percent of women had.

Drowsy driving is one of the most lethal consequences of inadequate sleep, the CDC noted. According to the Department of Transportation, it's responsible for an estimated 1,550 deaths and 40,000 injuries each year in the United States.

Sleep difficulties are associated with mental disorders, limited daily functioning, injury and mortality rates, the CDC said.

To promote healthy sleep behaviors, increased public health awareness of sleep quality, behaviors and disorders is needed, as well as training in sleep medicine for healthcare professionals.

The second report examined the effects of getting too little sleep on daily activities. That report was based on data from two surveys, conducted between 2005 and 2008, including almost 11,000 respondents.

Among the six daily activities included in the survey, the ability to concentrate was the most commonly reported difficulty associated with too little sleep. About 29 percent of adults who got fewer than 7 hours of sleep a night said they had a hard time concentrating, while just 19 percent of those getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night reported this.

Those who reported sleeping less than seven hours also had greater difficulties remembering things, participating in hobbies, driving or taking public transportation, taking care of financial affairs and working than did those who reported getting 7-9 hours a night.

And overall, women were more likely than men to report sleep-related difficulties in their daily activities, the report said.

There are several limitations in interpreting the reports' results, the CDC said. For example, the first included only households with telephone landlines in 12 states, and both studies were based on self-reported data.

Source;
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41890033/ns/health-health_care/

I get about 6.5 hours sleep a night and find I have more energy and focus than I do on the weekends when I sleep in. I've heard people Edison & Tesla only slept around 4 hours a day.

Here's an interesting article on Polyphasic sleeping

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm

Reunite wrote:

I get about 6.5 hours sleep a night and find I have more energy and focus than I do on the weekends when I sleep in. I've heard people Edison & Tesla only slept around 4 hours a day.

Here's an interesting article on Polyphasic sleeping

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm

thanks Mate, i sense you have become accustomed to sleep deprivation ~ being an administrator here

Have you always been this way ~ even when you were younger? Maybe it is in your genes?

In regards to this wasteful and senseless government study the only good thing about it is, hopefully it might alert someone to the dangers of this madness?? i see this more as a serious problem with those that commute long hours have two jobs, have children, students etc...and are just over whelmed with too many obligations! Normally ~ 5 hours will do for me, but once in a while, i enjoy a nap ~ if i am going full tilt all day!

The idea that early humans were stupid or primitive is just simply wrong. Most of what you learned about early man in school has been shown to be nonsense.

Earliest humans not so different from us, research suggests

Kevin Stacey - University of Chicago


That human evolution follows a progressive trajectory is one of the most deeply-entrenched assumptions about our species. This assumption is often expressed in popular media by showing cavemen speaking in grunts and monosyllables (the GEICO Cavemen being a notable exception). But is this assumption correct? Were the earliest humans significantly different from us?

In a paper published in the latest issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologist John Shea (Stony Brook University) shows they were not.

The problem, Shea argues, is that archaeologists have been focusing on the wrong measurement of early human behavior. Archaeologists have been searching for evidence of "behavioral modernity", a quality supposedly unique to Homo sapiens, when they ought to have been investigating "behavioral variability," a quantitative dimension to the behavior of all living things.

Human origins research began in Europe, and the European Upper Paleolithic archaeological record has long been the standard against which the behavior of earlier and non-European humans is compared. During the Upper Paleolithic (45,000-12,000 years ago), Homo sapiens fossils first appear in Europe together with complex stone tool technology, carved bone tools, complex projectile weapons, advanced techniques for using fire, cave art, beads and other personal adornments. Similar behaviors are either universal or very nearly so among recent humans, and thus, archaeologists cite evidence for these behaviors as proof of human behavioral modernity.

Yet, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils occur between 100,000-200,000 years ago in Africa and southern Asia and in contexts lacking clear and consistent evidence for such behavioral modernity. For decades anthropologists contrasted these earlier "archaic" African and Asian humans with their "behaviorally-modern" Upper Paleolithic counterparts, explaining the differences between them in terms of a single "Human Revolution" that fundamentally changed human biology and behavior. Archaeologists disagree about the causes, timing, pace, and characteristics of this revolution, but there is a consensus that the behavior of the earliest Homo sapiens was significantly that that of more-recent "modern" humans.

Shea tested the hypothesis that there were differences in behavioral variability between earlier and later Homo sapiens using stone tool evidence dating to between 250,000- 6000 years ago in eastern Africa. This region features the longest continuous archaeological record of Homo sapiens behavior. A systematic comparison of variability in stone tool making strategies over the last quarter-million years shows no single behavioral revolution in our species' evolutionary history. Instead, the evidence shows wide variability in Homo sapiens toolmaking strategies from the earliest times onwards. Particular changes in stone tool technology can be explained in terms of the varying costs and benefits of different toolmaking strategies, such as greater needs for cutting edge or more efficiently-transportable and functionally-versatile tools. One does not need to invoke a "human revolution" to account for these changes, they are explicable in terms of well-understood principles of behavioral ecology.

This study has important implications for archaeological research on human origins. Shea argues that comparing the behavior of our most ancient ancestors to Upper Paleolithic Europeans holistically and ranking them in terms of their "behavioral modernity" is a waste of time. There are no such things as modern humans, Shea argues, just Homo sapiens populations with a wide range of behavioral variability. Whether this range is significantly different from that of earlier and other hominin species remains to be discovered. However, the best way to advance our understanding of human behavior is by researching the sources of behavioral variability in particular adaptive strategies.

Source;
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-02/uocp-ehn021411.php


###

John Shea, "Homo sapiens is as Homo sapiens was: Behavioral variability vs. 'behavioral modernity' in Paleolithic archaeology." Current Anthropology 54:1 (February 2011).

from what i've come to understand and believe... the quake was caused by the continuing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates; Some have speculated it was caused by the harrp system?

Gio

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Christchurch quake mapped from space
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News


The coloured bands, or fringes, represent movement towards or away from the spacecraft

he upheaval wrought by the 22 February earthquake in Christchurch, NZ, is illustrated in new radar imagery.

The Magnitude 6.3 tremor killed more than 160 people and shattered a city already reeling from a previous seismic event in September.

Data from the Japanese Alos spacecraft has been used to map the way the ground deformed during the most recent quake.

It shows clearly that the focus of the tremor was right under the city's south-eastern suburbs.

The type of image displayed on this page is known as a synthetic aperture radar interferogram.

It is made by combining a sequence of radar images acquired by an orbiting satellite "before" and "after" a quake.

The technique allows very precise measurements to be made of any ground motion that takes place between the image acquisitions.

The coloured bands, or fringes, represent movement towards or away from the spacecraft.

In this interferogram, the peak ground motion is almost 50cm of motion towards the satellite.

"It's like a contour map but it's showing to the south-east of Christchurch that the ground motion is towards Alos. That's uplift," explained Dr John Elliott from the Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes and Tectonics (Comet) at Oxford University, UK.

"And then right under Christchurch, we see subsidence. That's partly due to liquefaction but it's mainly due to the way the Earth deforms when you snap it like an elastic band."

Where the rainbow fringes become most tightly spaced is where the fault break came closest to the surface, although the data indicates the fault is unlikely to have broken right through to the surface.

Blind danger

Liquefaction is a phenomenon that afflicts loose sediments in an earthquake and is akin to a lateral landslide.

It is a major issue for Christchurch because the city is built on an alluvial plain, and this type of ground will amplify any shaking during a tremor.


BBC News reader Gillian Needham took this image of central Christchurch moments after the quake struck New Zealand's second city on 22 February

Scientists are using the Alos information to understand better the future seismic hazards in this part of New Zealand.

It has become obvious from recent events that Christchurch sits close to "blind" faulting - faulting that is at risk of rupture, but which betrays little evidence of its existence at the surface, meaning the potential danger it poses is not fully recognised.

"It means much more work needs to be done around Christchurch," said Dr Elliot.

"People knew they could get earthquakes further into the mountains [in the west of South Island]; that's how they've been built in some ways, through earthquakes and all the faulting.

"But to get an earthquake right under their city will have been a surprise to nearly every single person."

Liquid lurch

The interferogram is noticeably incomplete - there are several areas where the fringing is missing. There are a number of reasons for this.

To the east is ocean, and this technique does not work over water.

To the west, the issue is related to the satellite track and the fact that it views the Earth in strips. Hence, you get bands of data.

But the more interesting and more relevant omissions are in Christchurch itself.

Dr Elliot commented: "Here, the patches are the result of de-correlation between the acquisition images, where we just can't match them - they're too different.

"There are a few reasons for that. Usually it's the result of vegetation growth, but here it could be due to more extreme shaking or liquefaction."


uesday's quake was less energetic but more destructive

Researchers are investigating the relationship between September's Magnitude 7.1 quake and last month's 6.3 event.

The latter is very much considered to be an aftershock from the former, even though they were separated by six months.

The September quake occurred about 40km to the west, rupturing a similar length of fault. The most recent tremor ruptured about 15km of fault.

What scientists need to know now is the nature of any "seismic gap" between the two; that is, a segment of fault which was not broken in either tremor but which may have been loaded with additional strain because of both those events.



Source;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12668190

Study co-author Jarrett Byrnes, of the National Center for Ecological Analyses and Synthesis, says "Species extinction is happening now, and it's happening quickly. And unfortunately, our resources are limited. This means we're going to have to prioritize our conservation efforts, and to do that, scientists have to start providing concrete answers about the numbers and types of species that are needed to sustain human life. If we don't produce these estimates quickly, then we risk crossing a threshold that we can't come back from.”

As long as profit is our only social priority we are never going to be able to make the decisions we need to. In the corporate financed fact-free world of the Right reports like this have little impact because there is a considerable effort to make them disappear by flooding them out with Denier misinformation. But as I have said before. Nature bats last, and doesn't care about polemics.

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Loss of Plant Diversity Threatens Earth's Life-Support Systems

Released: 3/7/2011 11:30 AM EST
Source: Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS),College of William and Mary

Newswise — An international team of researchers including professor Emmett Duffy of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science has published a comprehensive new analysis showing that loss of plant biodiversity disrupts the fundamental services that ecosystems provide to humanity.

Plant communities—threatened by development, invasive species, climate change, and other factors—provide humans with food, help purify water supplies, generate oxygen, and supply raw materials for building, clothing, paper, and other products.

The 9-member research team, led by professor Brad Cardinale of the University of Michigan, analyzed the results of 574 field and laboratory studies—conducted across 5 continents during the last 2 decades—that measured the changes in productivity resulting from loss of plants species. This type of “meta-analysis” allows researchers to move beyond their own individual or collaborative studies to get a much more reliable global picture. Their study appears in the March issue of the American Journal of Botany.

"The idea that declining diversity compromises the functioning of ecosystems was controversial for many years,” says Duffy, a marine ecologist who has studied the effects of biodiversity loss in seagrass beds. “This paper should be the final nail in the coffin of that controversy. It's the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis yet, and it clearly shows that extinction of plant species compromises the productivity that supports Earth's ecosystems."

The team’s analysis shows that plant communities with many different species are nearly 1.5 times more productive than those with only one species (such as a cornfield or carefully tended lawn), and ongoing research finds even stronger benefits of diversity when the various other important natural services of ecosystems are considered. Diverse communities are also more efficient at capturing nutrients, light, and other limiting resources.

The analysis also suggests, based on laboratory studies of algae, that diverse plant communities generate oxygen—and take-up carbon dioxide—more than twice as fast as plant monocultures.

The team’s findings are consistent for plant communities both on land and in fresh- and saltwater, suggesting that plant biodiversity is of general and fundamental importance to the functioning of the Earth’s entire biosphere.

Duffy, Loretta and Lewis Glucksman Professor of Marine Science at VIMS, says the team’s findings are important locally because estuaries like Chesapeake Bay are naturally low in diversity, making them especially vulnerable to ecological surprises resulting from loss of species.

“Salt marshes and seagrass beds depend largely on one or a few species of plants that create the habitat structure,” says Duffy. “When such species are lost, low diversity means there is often no one else to take their place and the effects can ripple out through the community of animals, potentially up to fishery species.”

In addition to analyzing the general effects of biodiversity loss, the team also sought to determine the specific fraction of plant species needed to maintain the effective functioning of a particular ecosystem—important information for resource managers with limited human and financial resources to manage forests, marine reserves, and other protected areas on land and sea. The results of this effort were mixed, and the team’s ongoing research is tackling this question.

Data from the study did suggest, however, that biodiversity loss may follow a “tipping-point” model wherein some fraction of species can be lost with minimal change to ecological processes, followed by a sharp drop in ecosystem function as species loss continues.

Biodiversity loss in the real world
Recognizing that their findings mostly rest on analysis of short-term experiments (generally a few days, weeks, or months) in relatively small settings, the researchers also attempted to determine how diversity effects “scale-up” to longer time scales, bigger areas, or both. The authors note that these are the real-world scales “at which species extinctions actually matter and at which conservation and management efforts take place.”

The team’s findings suggest that scale does indeed matter, and that small laboratory and field experiments typically underestimate the effects of biodiversity loss. In the researchers’ own words, “Data are generally consistent with the idea that the strength of diversity effects are stronger in experiments that run longer, and in experiments performed at larger spatial scales.”

Duffy is now further testing this scaling issue with a 3-year grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation. He is using the grant to establish a global experimental network for studying how nutrient pollution and changes in biodiversity impact seagrass beds.

The future of biodiversity studies
The American Journal of Botany study also identifies the additional information needed to better understand biodiversity loss and its effects. Important frontiers include additional studies of how small-scale diversity experiments scale-up to real ecosystems; how biodiversity loss compares to and interacts with other environmental stressors such as climate change, invasive species, low-oxygen dead zones, ocean acidification, and water pollution; and how species-level diversity compares in importance with diversity at other levels such as genetic and functional (e.g., herbivore, grazer, or carnivore).

Cardinale says information from these types of studies will put scientists "in a position to calculate the number of species needed to support the variety of processes required to sustain life in real ecosystems.” He adds, “And we don't mean ‘need’ in an ethical or an aesthetic way. We mean an actual concrete number of species required to sustain basic life-support processes."

Study co-author Jarrett Byrnes, of the National Center for Ecological Analyses and Synthesis, says "Species extinction is happening now, and it's happening quickly. And unfortunately, our resources are limited. This means we're going to have to prioritize our conservation efforts, and to do that, scientists have to start providing concrete answers about the numbers and types of species that are needed to sustain human life. If we don't produce these estimates quickly, then we risk crossing a threshold that we can't come back from.”

Source;
http://www.newswise.com/articles/loss-of-plant-diversity-threatens-earth-s-life-support-systems

More on

Unlike this toddler, when i was younger, it was difficult for me to take naps ~ not anymore




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Why Naps Make You Smarter

by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 08 March 2011

A good night's sleep is crucial to storing knowledge learned earlier in the day — that much was known. Now, a new study finds that getting shut-eye before you learn is important, too.

Volunteers who took a 100-minute nap before launching into an evening memorization task scored an average of 20 percentage points higher on the memory test compared with people who did the memorization without snoozing first.

"It really seems to be the first evidence that we're aware of that indicates a proactive benefit of sleep," study co-author Matthew Walker, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, told LiveScience.

"It's not simply enough to sleep after learning," Walker said. "It turns out you also need to sleep before learning."

Refreshing naps

Earlier research has found that dreams boost learning, with one study suggesting a 90-minute nap may help lock in long-term memories. But Walker's research, published this week in the journal Current Biology, finds that another phase of sleep, called nonrapid eye movement (NREM) is most closely linked to the learning boost provided by a nap.

Walker and his colleagues recruited 44 volunteers — 27 women and 17 men — to come to the sleep lab at noon. First, the volunteers were given a task in which they had to memorize 100 names and faces. Then they were tested for how well they recalled the face-name matches.

Next, the researchers tucked half of the volunteers in for a nap between 2 p.m. and 3:40 p.m. The scientists measured the napping volunteers' brain waves as they slept. The other group of participants stayed awake and did daily activities as they normally would. At 6 p.m., both groups memorized another set of 100 faces and names and were tested on their memory. (The experiment was set up so nappers had more than an hour to shake off any remaining fuzziness before the test, Walker said.)

The first major finding, Walker said, was that learning ability degrades as the day wears on. Volunteers who didn't nap did about 12 percent worse on the evening test than they did on the morning test. (Walker presented preliminary findings of this effect at a conference in February 2010.) But shut-eye not only reversed those effects, it provided a memory boost: Napping test-takers did about 10 percent better on the evening test than they did on the morning test. In all, the difference in scores between nappers and non-nappers was about 20 percent, Walker said.

Secondly, the brain-wave monitoring turned up a likely culprit for the memory upgrade: a short, synchronized burst of electrical activity called a sleep spindle. These sleep spindles last about one second and can occur 1,000 times per night during NREM sleep. People who had more of these spindles, especially people who had more over a frontal area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, showed the most refreshment in learning capacity after their nap, Walker said.

Uploading memories

Walker and his colleagues suspect that the sleep spindles are working to transfer information from the hippocampus, a small area deep in your brain where memories are made, to the prefrontal cortex, which serves as long-term storage. That frees up the hippocampus to make new memories, Walker said.

"It's almost like clearing out your informational inbox of your e-mail so you can start to receive new e-mails the next day," he said.

NREM sleep and sleep spindle frequency change throughout a person's life span, Walker said. Older people, for example, have a decline in sleep spindles, suggesting that sleep disruption could be one reason for the memory loss prevalent in old age. The volunteers in the current study were young, but the researchers hope to investigate the effect of sleep spindles on learning in older adults, Walker said.

The research also draws attention to the importance of sleep, Walker said. Sleep spindles happen more frequently later in the night, precisely the time people cut short when they rise early for work and school, Walker said.

"Somewhere between infancy and early adulthood, we abandon the notion that sleep is useful," Walker said. That needs to change, he said: "Sleep is doing something very active for things like learning and memory. I think for us as a society to stop thinking of sleep as a luxury rather than a biological necessity is going to be wise."

Source;
http://www.livescience.com/13125-sleep-naps-boost-memory.html

i have posted several articles here in regards to this phenomena - this should not be a mystery to those who read this thread...that the Bee colony collapse...once limited to Europe and America... is now being seen in Asia and Africa

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In some ways it seems such a small story. Except for the British paper The Independent it hardly gets any mainstream media coverage. After all, it's just little bees. But if this continues the food crisis we presently face will be dwarfed by the crisis arising from the demise of the bees. Food production will fall drastically.


Decline of honey bees now a global phenomenon, says United Nations


By Michael McCarthy, Environmental Editor -
Thursday, 10 March 2011

The mysterious collapse of honey-bee colonies is becoming a global phenomenon, scientists working for the United Nations have revealed.

Declines in managed bee colonies, seen increasingly in Europe and the US in the past decade, are also now being observed in China and Japan and there are the first signs of African collapses from Egypt, according to the report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The authors, who include some of the world's leading honey-bee experts, issue a stark warning about the disappearance of bees, which are increasingly important as crop pollinators around the globe. Without profound changes to the way human beings manage the planet, they say, declines in pollinators needed to feed a growing global population are likely to continue. The scientists warn that a number of factors may now be coming together to hit bee colonies around the world, ranging from declines in flowering plants and the use of damaging insecticides, to the worldwide spread of pests and air pollution. They call for farmers and landowners to be offered incentives to restore pollinator-friendly habitats, including key flowering plants near crop-producing fields and stress that more care needs to be taken in the choice, timing and application of insecticides and other chemicals. While managed hives can be moved out of harm's way, "wild populations (of pollinators) are completely vulnerable", says the report.

"The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century," said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director.

"The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.

"Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature.

"Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature's services in a world of close to seven billion people."

Declines in bee colonies date back to the mid 1960s in Europe, but have accelerated since 1998, while in North America, losses of colonies since 2004 have left the continent with fewer managed pollinators than at any time in the past 50 years, says the report.

Now Chinese beekeepers have recently "faced several inexplicable and complex symptoms of colony losses in both species", the report says. And it has been reported elsewhere that some Chinese farmers have had to resort to pollinating fruit trees by hand because of the lack of insects.

Furthermore, a quarter of beekeepers in Japan "have recently been confronted with sudden losses of their bee colonies", while in Africa, beekeepers along the Egyptian Nile have been reporting signs of "colony collapse disorder" – although to date there are no other confirmed reports from the rest of the continent.

The report lists a number of factors which may be coming together to cause the decline and they include:

* Habitat degradation, including the loss of flowering plant species that provide food for bees;

* Some insecticides, including the so-called "systemic" insecticides which can migrate to the entire plant as it grows and be taken in by bees in nectar and pollen;

* Parasites and pests, such as the well-known Varroa mite;

* Air pollution, which may be interfering with the ability of bees to find flowering plants and thus food – scents that could travel more than 800 metres in the 1800s now reach less than 200 metres from a plant.

"The transformation of the countryside and rural areas in the past half-century or so has triggered a decline in wild-living bees and other pollinators," said one of the lead authors, Dr Peter Neumann of the Swiss Bee Research Centre.

"Society is increasingly investing in 'industrial-scale' hives and managed colonies to make up the shortfall and going so far as to truck bees around to farms and fields in order to maintain our food supplies.

"A variety of factors are making these man-made colonies vulnerable to decline and collapse. We need to get smarter about how we manage these hives, but perhaps more importantly, we need to better manage the landscape beyond, in order to recover wild bee populations."

Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/decline-of-honey-bees-now-a-global-phenomenon-says-united-nations-2237541.html

The Illness Profit System at work; our healthcare model just gets more Orwellian year by year.




How Does the Drug Industry Get Away with Broadcasting Those Deceptive Ads?


By David Rosen, AlterNet
Posted on March 12, 2011, Printed on March 13, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149909/

We’ve all seen them in newspapers and magazines, on TV and the Internet -- cheerful people in glossy, picturesque ads claiming that by taking a little magic prescription pill their lives were immeasurably improved.

As the TV ad fades, a cautionary voice quietly recites a host of “risk factors,” potentially catastrophic consequences that could result from taking the magical pill. One can’t but wonder if the cure is worse than the ailment.

A well-known ad features Dr. Robert Jarvik, a pioneer in the development of the artificial heart, pitching Pfizer’s cholesterol drug Lipitor. He comes across as a trusted expert with your best interest at heart, but viewers would not know that he is neither a cardiologist, nor licensed to practice medicine. (Lipitor’s 2009 sales were $5.4 billion.)

Another ad features Dorothy Hamill, the Olympic skating champion, skating effortlessly while promoting Merck's arthritis drug, Vioxx. The viewer would not know that Merck had for years knowingly withheld incriminating research from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The data would have barred the drug’s commercial release and may have saved the lives of an estimated 27,000 people who suffered heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths after taking it. After Merck made billions, the drug was taken off the market.

These are two of a never-ending barrage of pharmaceutical advertisements known as direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads that bombard Americans day in and day out. Such ads are permitted only in the U.S. and New Zealand. They are intended to provoke an individual consumer to request a specific prescription drug from their doctor. In 2009, the pharmaceutical industry spent an estimated $4.5 billion on such advertising. Total 2007 U.S. pharma industry sales were $315 billion.

DTC ads give viewers the illusion that they can and should be their own doctor; they are designed to make viewers believe that they can and should prescribe for themselves. By fostering a false sense of demand for prescription-required drugs, DTC drug ads undermine the real knowledge that doctors should have when, in consultation with the patient, a treatment plan is established.

Next time you see one of these ads, make sure you are aware of the detailed risk factors that are either buried at the bottom of the page or mentioned at the commercial’s end. These risks tell only half the story of the drug’s real potential harm; the other half usually doesn’t get told: how the pharmaceutical industry is harming the health of Americans.

* * *

Federal regulation of drugs was the result of public outrage over scandals exposed by early-20th-century muckrakers, most notably Upton Sinclair, who revealed widespread adulterated food products and poisonous patent medicines. This led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. In 1938, Congress passed the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act that gave the FDA authority over drug company marketing materials. In 1962, FDA authority was further extended to regulate advertisements of prescription drugs.

However, things began to change in the 1980s. In 1981, Merck published the first DTC ad for a prescription drug, Pneumovax, in Reader’s Digest. It was followed by numerous print ads, and in 1983, the first television prescription drug ad for Boots Pharmaceutical’s Rufen, prescription strength ibuprofen.

Over the next decade-plus, the pharmaceutical industry, emboldened by the Reagan-era belief in “limited government,” steadily pushed to deregulate DTC ads. In 1997, the FDA loosened advertising rules leading to an enormous increase in DTC ad spending. For example, in 1996, less then $1 billion ($985 million) was spent on DTC ads out of the industry’s total promotional spending of $11.4 billion; in 2005, total pharma promotional spending nearly tripled to $29.9 billion and the amount spent on DTC ads quadrupled to $4.2 billion.

According to an invaluable 2007 study led by Dominick Frosch, “Creating Demand for Prescription Drugs,” a typical American television viewer can expect to spend 16 hours per year watching DTC drug commercials. This does not include the ads on radio, newspapers and magazines, billboards and the Internet. DTC ads typically focus on a handful of chronic conditions like depression, erectile dysfunction and insomnia.

Nevertheless, a perfect target for pharmaceutical intervention is America’s children and youth, and no condition has been more aggressively pursued than Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Shire introduced Vyvanse in 2007 to replace its old blockbuster drug, Adderall XR, which had just lost its patent protection. The drug is targeted at children 6 to 12 years old, so the first DTC ads were placed in women’s magazines.

Some raised concern that the DTC ads violated the UN’s 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, but the FDA brushed it off. The drug did include the following ominous warming: “MISUSE OF AMPHETAMINE MAY CAUSE SUDDEN DEATH AND SERIOUS CARDIOVASCULAR ADVERSE EVENTS.” Gone unstated in the DTC ads was the fact that Vyvanse is chemically based on methamphetamine, a Schedule II controlled substance like methadone, morphine and oxycodone. (Vyvanse’s 2009 sales were $660,000.)

Scheming pharma execs and ad agency hacks are not above inventing an illness to sell a new drug. A couple of years ago, Eli Lilly discovered a "new" female condition, Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), to promote Sarafem, a form of Prozac. It was the first and only FDA-approved prescription drug to treat a woman’s menstrual cycle. Menstruation can be painful, and for some women even debilitating. Lilly exploited this, turning one of nature’s most primal bodily functions into a "disorder." The ad promised women that the drug would "help you feel more in control."

This new condition was a surprise to the American Psychiatric Association, which did not recognized PMDD as a disorder. It has proved so profitable because it turned a real, bodily experience (with, for many, pain and discomfort) into a disorder that can be cured. A magic capsule could now control an all-too-human condition that is as old as humanity itself, one that facilitates the species’ reproduction. Science had become witchcraft -- and with a hefty profit.

* * *

A DTC drug ad is designed to address two pharmaceutical industry concerns. First, it is intended to promote both new and established prescription drugs. Second, it is used to offset a drug’s competitive challenge from a generic drug.

Two questions determine a DTC drug ad’s effectiveness. First, does it work in terms of medical factors; i.e., does it help a person effectively address a medical condition? And, second, does it work as measured in corporate terms; i.e., does it get consumers to ask their doctors about the drug, get a prescription and get a sale?

While an answer to the first question remains unresolved, the answer is clear with regard to the second question. In 2010, Thomson Reuters polled some 3,000 Americans about drug advertising. The study’s principal findings were revealing:

* Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they've seen, heard or received some kind of advertising for a prescription drug in the last six months.
* One-third of respondents say they talked to their doctor about a drug and got a prescription for it.
* Three-fifths of respondents said their doctor was the principal source for information about the prescription drug.

Not surprising, given the way people watch television, the study also found that many people didn’t pay much attention to the ads. Dr. Ray Fabius, chief medical officer for Thomson Reuters' health care and science business unit, noted "at least one-third of people aren't hearing them or tune them out."

Clearly, effectiveness of DTC ads is in the eyes of the beholder, whether measured against medical or business criteria. The pharma industry’s principal lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), supports DTCs, since “getting that information to patients and consumers is the goal of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising about prescription medicines.”

And DTCs seem effective, particularly in generating new sales. According to a Kaiser study, Americans in 1992 got an average of seven prescriptions per year; however, in 2008, the average number of prescriptions nearly doubled to 12 prescriptions a year. Either people have gotten a lot sicker or DTC ads are doing their job. The report notes, DTCs have “added about $180 billion to our medical spending.”

Direct-to-consumer drug ads are ostensibly educational or informational messages designed to help Americans address critical medical issues. While the jury is out as to their medical efficacy, the ads' contribution to the bottom line is undeniable. The question that remains unanswered is how much DTC ads are harming the health of Americans.

Source;
http://www.alternet.org/media/149909/how_does_the_drug_industry_get_away_with_broadcasting_those_deceptive_ads?page=entire

This increasingly looks like the real deal. If it is we have a game changer.

Cold Fusion Steams Ahead at World's Oldest University

HANK MILLS trans. by SEPP HASS - Pure energy Systems

The saga of Andrea Rossi's Nickel-Hydrogen Cold Fusion technology is only accelerating and not slowing down. Physicists are warming up to the technology, new calorimeter tests are forthcoming, media announcements are on the way, and a year long testing program at the University of Bologna has started. With a demonstration of the one megawatt system in the USA in the works (before it is shipped to Europe) and the opening of the one megawatt plant in Greece by late this October things are only going to keep moving faster.

Let's get down to business. We have some ground to cover!

One Year Research and Development Program

Andrea Rossi has announced a one year program is starting at the University of Bologna to study his cold fusion (LENR) technology. Apparently, this is happening as we speak. Here is the quote from his blog...read more...
[url]http://pesn.com/2011/03/07/9501782_Cold_Fusion_Steams_Ahead_at_Worlds_Oldest_ University/[/url]



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt2JqEmaUGc&feature=player_embedded

This piece is polemic, but it is also correct, which is why I am running it. Longtime readers know I am unutterably opposed to the nuclear power industry. My perception of this power source was formed initially by the final Congressional testimony of Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the American nuclear naval fleet. He requested the opportunity to testify before Congress because he wanted to put on the record his conviction that the civilian nuclear power industry was a disaster waiting to happen. My views were subsequently powerfully reinforced by Three Mile Island, and my visit to Chernobyl, just months after that disaster occurred, and my experience at seeing the abandoned city of Pripyat.

The nuclear power industry was created during the cold war as a way of assuring that there would be a technological base of scientists, engineers, and technicians skilled in nuclear technology that would be available to the military, and to provide corporations involved with military nuclear power with a civilian profit making vector of activity. From the beginning, although it was not admitted, it was understood that nuclear power held the potential for disasters of a kind never before seen in nature -- although this was concealed from the public, which was shown happy images of nuclear fantasy. That is why from the get go the industry was indemnified by the government. When nuclear power goes bad it goes bad in a unique and horrifying way. No one will live in Pripyat ever again, period. Full stop. A part of the Ukraine has been blighted forever. That Obama is supporting the resurrection of nuclear power is just another of those nasty little compromises in which he seems to specialize.


Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants: The No BS Info on Japan's Disastrous Nuclear Operators


Texas nuclear plants planned by Tokyo Electric. (Image: NINA)

Monday 14 March 2011

I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.

I don't know the law in Japan, so I can't tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.

But what will Obama plead? The administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas - by TEPCO and local partners. As if the Gulf hasn't suffered enough. Here are the facts about TEPCO and the industry you haven't heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or "Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from al-Qaeda.

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from "failed" to "passed."

The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction, which will work with TEPCO to build the Texas plant. Lord help us.

There's more.

Last night, I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.

These safety backup systems are the "EDGs" in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators. That they didn't work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn't save a building because "it was on fire."

What dim bulbs designed this system? One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba. Toshiba was also an architect of the emergency diesel system.

Now be afraid. Obama's $4 billion bailout in the making is called the South Texas Project. It's been sold as a red-white-and-blue way to make power domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand. However, the reactor will be made substantially in Japan by the company that bought the US brand name, Westinghouse - Toshiba.

I once had a Toshiba computer. I only had to send it in once for warranty work. However, it's kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway to the earth's core.

TEPCO and Toshiba don't know what my son learned in eighth grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So, these companies are real stupid, eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn't have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.

Back in the day, when we checked the emergency backup diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuclear plant, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They'd been tested. The tests were faked; the diesels run for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, "Snap, Crackle and Pop."

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(Note: Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.)

In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells TEPCO to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn't want to do.

I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders. One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and TEPCO to lure them to America. The US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.

In Japan, it's simply not done. The culture does not allow the salary men, who work all their lives for one company, to drop the dime.

Not that US law is a wondrous shield: both engineers in the New York case were fired and blacklisted by the industry. Nevertheless, the government (local, state, federal) brought civil racketeering charges against the builders. The jury didn't buy the corporation's excuses and, in the end, the plant was, thankfully, dismantled.

Am I on some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade? No. In fact, I'm far more frightened by the American operators in the South Texas nuclear project, especially Shaw. Stone & Webster, now the Shaw nuclear division, was also the firm that conspired to fake the EDG tests in New York . (The company's other exploits have been exposed by their former consultant, John Perkins, in his book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.") If the planet wants to shiver, consider this: Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become worldwide partners in the construction of nuclear stations.

The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing should also give you the willies. But as I'm in the middle of investigating the American partners, I'll save that for another day.

So, if we turned to America's own nuclear contractors, would we be safe? Well, two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky high, were built by General Electric of the Good Old US of A.

After Texas, you're next. The Obama administration is planning a total of $56 billion in loans for nuclear reactors all over America.

And now, the homicides:

CNN is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, swept away or lost in the explosion. These plants are now releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the "levels are not dangerous." These are the same people who said these meltdowns could never happen. Over years, not days, there may be a thousand people, two thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation.

In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown "morbidity" rates for the county government. It would be irresponsible for me to estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without further information; but it is just plain criminal for the TEPCO shoguns to say that these releases are not dangerous.

Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn't care who lives and who dies, whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.

Heaven help us. Because Obama won't.

Source;
http://www.truth-out.org/tokyo-electric-build-us-nuclear-plants-the-no-bs-info-japans-disastrous-nuclear-operators68457

There are a number of things about which I disagree with Ralph Nader, but this assessment is fact based, and accurate. I chose it from more scientific papers because it had all the relevant data in one report.



Nuclear Nightmare

Friday, March 18. 2011

The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States—many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.

Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power’s overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.

Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry’s promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area “the size of Pennsylvania” and cause massive casualties. You, the taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power research, development, and promotion from day one with tens of billions of dollars.

Because of many costs, perils, close calls at various reactors, and the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, there has not been a nuclear power plant built in the United States since 1974.

Now the industry is coming back “on your back” claiming it will help reduce global warming from fossil fuel emitted greenhouse gases.

Pushed aggressively by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu, who refuses to meet with longtime nuclear industry critics, here is what “on your back” means:

1. Wall Street will not finance new nuclear plants without a 100% taxpayer loan guarantee. Too risky. That’s a lot of guarantee given that new nukes cost $12 billion each, assuming no mishaps. Obama and the Congress are OK with that arrangement.

2. Nuclear power is uninsurable in the private insurance market—too risky. Under the Price-Anderson Act, taxpayers pay the greatest cost of a meltdown’s devastation.

3. Nuclear power plants and transports of radioactive wastes are a national security nightmare for the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine the target that thousands of vulnerable spent fuel rods present for sabotage.

4. Guess who pays for whatever final waste repositories are licensed? You the taxpayer and your descendants as far as your gene line persists. Huge decommissioning costs, at the end of a nuclear plant’s existence come from the ratepayers’ pockets.

5. Nuclear plant disasters present impossible evacuation burdens for those living anywhere near a plant, especially if time is short.

Imagine evacuating the long-troubled Indian Point plants 26 miles north of New York City. Workers in that region have a hard enough time evacuating their places of employment during 5 pm rush hour. That’s one reason Secretary of State Clinton (in her time as Senator of New York) and Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the shutdown of Indian Point.

6. Nuclear power is both uneconomical and unnecessary. It can’t compete against energy conservation, including cogeneration, windpower and ever more efficient, quicker, safer, renewable forms of providing electricity. Amory Lovins argues this point convincingly (see RMI.org). Physicist Lovins asserts that nuclear power “will reduce and retard climate protection.” His reasoning: shifting the tens of billions invested in nuclear power to efficiency and renewables reduce far more carbon per dollar (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf). The country should move deliberately to shutdown nuclear plants, starting with the aging and seismically threatened reactors. Peter Bradford, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioner has also made a compelling case against nuclear power on economic and safety grounds (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf).

There is far more for ratepayers, taxpayers and families near nuclear plants to find out. Here’s how you can start:

1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table. Insist that the critics as well as the proponents testify and cross-examine each other in front of you and the media.

2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can’t buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can’t buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don’t stay in business.

3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn’t required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power.

The people in northern Japan may lose their land, homes, relatives, and friends as a result of a dangerous technology designed simply to boil water. There are better ways to generate steam.

Like the troubled Japanese nuclear plants, the Indian Point plants and the four plants at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon in southern California rest near earthquake faults. The seismologists concur that there is a 94% chance of a big earthquake in California within the next thirty years. Obama, Chu and the powerful nuke industry must not be allowed to force the American people to play Russian Roulette!

Source;
http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/2251-Nuclear-Nightmare.html

What Benjamin Franklin began is now winding down, a further testament to our switch to electronic communications. I think it is pretty clear we are going to five day service, and the truth is... who cares.



U.S. Postal Service announces sweeping job cuts, district office closures

By Lisa Rein, Thursday, March 24, 2011

The U.S. Postal Service announced Thursday that it will reduce its workforce with layoffs and offers of buyouts and will close seven district offices from New England to New Mexico to help address record losses.

The reorganization, designed to eliminate 7,500 administrative, executive and postmaster jobs this year, came as a commission that is evaluating the Postal Service’s plan to eliminate Saturday delivery concluded that one in four letters would be delayed by not just one but by two days.

The independent Postal Regulatory Commission also said that postal officials underestimated the losses the agency would suffer from handling less mail— and overestimated the cost savings.

Five-day service and a smaller workforce are among the Postal Service’s strategies to become solvent after losses of $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010, the result of declining mail volumes. Projected losses for 2011 are $6.4 billion.

Once buyout decisions aimed at administrative staff are final in April, the agency plans to eliminate the jobs of thousands of postmasters and supervisors, many through layoffs, officials said.

“Nobody did anything wrong, but we’re a victim of the economy and past legislation,” said Anthony Vegliante, the Postal Service’s chief human resources officer and executive vice president. The cuts are expected to save $750 million a year.

District offices that handle managerial work will close in Columbus, Ohio; Albuquerque; Billings, Mont.; Macon, Ga.; Providence, R.I.; Troy, Mich.; and Carol Stream, Ill., the Postal Service said.

The closures will pave the way for the agency to close up to 2,000 local post offices throughout the next two years, a plan announced in January.

Vegliante said he expects about 3,000 administrators to take the buyouts, which will offer $20,000 to employees over age 50 with at least 20 years of service, or any age with at least 25 years of service. Layoffs will then be used to help reach the 7,500 goal, he said, though he would not commit to a number.

The Postal Service has eliminated 105,000 full-time positions in the last two years, among them clerks, plant workers and mail handlers. Those cuts were made mostly through attrition and early retirements.

The Postal Service announced plans for five-day service in 2009, although Congress, which must approve the change, has showed little interest in pursuing it.

Among the findings of the 211-page opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission:

• Five-day service would delay by two days delivery of 25 percent of first class and priority mail.

• The Postal Service did not adequately evaluate the effect of five-day service on rural areas.

• While the Postal Service estimated net savings from the reduced service at $3.1 billion, the commission’s estimate is closer to $1.7 billion.

• Lost revenue from mail volume declines from the service cuts would be $600 million a year, not the $200 million the Postal Services estimates.

Margaret Cigno, the regulatory commission’s chief analyst, said many letters normally delivered on Saturday would not arrive until Tuesday because Saturday mail would no longer be transported and processed over the weekend. “Saturday would not just end delivery, but mail would not go out,” she said.

Postal officials said they would continue supporting the plan.

“I’m comfortable that people did their due diligence,” Vegliante said, calling five-day service “an inevitable question.”

“Whether it’s tomorrow or 10 years from now, sooner or later it’s got to be dealt with.”

Source;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-postal-service-announces-sweeping-job-cuts-district-office-closures/2011/03/24/ABu3EpRB_story.html

Yep, we have had that five day service down here for decades now.

am soaking it in, gio ... keep posting
(i didn't wantya ta think i wasn't "listening"
cuz i wasn't responding - i try and stay away
from simple agree/disagree ego reactions ...)

Note ~ for the last few days it has been raining buckets here in the greater Seattle area. Just this afternoon, asi was driving past a local farming pasture, i glanced over and observed some cows who were grazing seeming obvious to the pouring rain ~ i couldn't help wondering about the accuracy of the following news report?


Radiation Traces Found in U.S. Milk
By Stephen Power

March 30, 2011

The U.S. government said Wednesday that traces of radiation have been found in milk in Washington state, but said the amounts are far too low to trigger any public-health concern.

The Environmental Protection Agency said a March 25 sample of milk produced in the Spokane, Wash., area contained a 0.8 pico curies per literlevel of iodine-131, which it said was less than one five-thousandth of the safety safety guideline set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The EPA said it increased monitoring after radiation leaked from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. It expects more such findings in coming days, but in amounts "far below levels of public-health concern, including for infants and children."

Iodine-131 has a half-life of about eight days, meaning levels should fade quickly. "These findings are a minuscule amount compared to what people experience every day," the agency said.

For example, a person would be exposed to low levels of radiation on a round trip cross country flight, watching television, and even from construction materials," Patricia Hansen, an FDA senior scientist, said in a written statement distributed by the EPA late Wednesday.

The FDA last week said it will block imports of Japanese milk products and certain other foods produced in the area around the Fukushima nuclear facility because of concerns about radiation contamination.

An EPA spokesman said that while the agency isn't certain that the iodine-131 found in the sampled milk came from Fukushima, its discovery is "consistent with" what the agency knows has been released so far from the damaged nuclear reactors there.

"We know we don't normally see iodine-131 in milk. We know there's been an incident where it's been released," the spokesman said. "And now we're seeing it."

Dairy industry officials stressed that products remained safe.

"Consumer safety is the highest priority for dairy farmers and dairy foods companies, and today's report by EPA and FDA confirms that our nation's dairy products continue to be safe to eat and drink," said Rob Vandenheuvel, general manager of the Ontario, Calif.-based Milk Producers Council, which represents dairies in Southern and Central California. "We recognize the concerns of our consumers, and the U.S. dairy industry will continue to work closely with federal and state government agencies to ensure that we maintain a safe milk supply."

Source;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576233221749626458.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

comments: giovonni

giovonni wrote:

W O W
never seen our earth portrayed this way - that slider
tool shows amazing rendering via gravity - that
deep, dark blue-black "hole" at the indian ocean
is spooky, don't you think?